FBI spying: The U.S. sinks to third-world status

You might also expect people to want to know how a story of treachery and corruption were created out of thin air. Fine, the very politicized people in the intelligence agencies hated Trump and thought he’d be a disaster. They were wrong, of course, but the question is what gave them the right to employ all the powers at their command to unseat a duly elected president?

If we’re now supposed to sweep it under the rug, then wouldn’t it be fair game to unleash a politicized CIA to spy on a Democratic president, or for a partisan FBI to trick his officials into lying to them? Except that then we really would have descended to a Third World rule of law.

It’s hard to define the rule of law, but one thing it has to mean is that there’s a barrier between law and politics. You don’t prosecute political enemies on trumped up charges, and especially you don’t overturn an election because it didn’t turn out the way you wanted. They do that sort of thing in Venezuela and Turkey. I had thought we were better than that.

The FBI and CIA have gotten away with it because they protect their own, and because they’re protected by a media establishment that isn’t a fan of the rule of law when it gets in their way. But the issue is too important to let it rest.